Antimony by The Moondig

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Two days before the Cold Moon ( the last supermoon of 2025, and the most extreme full moon Earth will see until 2042 ), The Moondig returned once more to our steadfast Luna. We travelled as musical mineralogists, as philosophical wanderers, as patient listeners to the tremors of an ancient world. Our objective: to seek the elusive element Antimony, atomic number 51, the silver-grey metalloïd belonging to the nitrogen group of the periodic table.

Antimony is known since antiquity. Its name, rooted in the Greek anti monos, “not alone”, hints at its perennial tendency to appear in company, bound intimately to other elements. The old Latin stibium, from which its symbol Sb was drawn, refers to grinding its black sulfide into black pigments for eye make-up. Crystallographically it inhabits the simple trigonal system, melting at the precise threshold of 630,628°C. Although physically it shares several traits with metals, chemically it behaves in striking contrast, reacting vigorously with oxidising acids and halogens

During the Moon’s fiery birth, forged in the cataclysmic impact that reset two worlds at once, the molten Lunar Glomagma Ocean separated metals from silicates. Antimony, both volatile and iron-affine, migrated efficiently into the forming metal core. After this early planetary distillation, only ghostlike traces remained behind: 0.02–0.08 parts per billion in the crust and mantle, a spectral presence measured in whispers rather than grains. On Earth, Antimony can be mined; on the Moon, it must be divined.

In our own alchemical pursuit, Antimony becomes a bridge between physics, art, and sound. The Moon gifted us the idea that its scarcity is like a tuning fork. Trace elements create delicate resonances: the way antimony’s poor thermal and electrical conductivity shapes its behaviour, the peculiar expansion of the metal when freezing ( a rare trait shared with bismuth and only two other elements ) suggested rhythmic structures and spatial motifs. And its more volatile personalities ( a solid solution of antimony trichloride, the explosive allotrope, hypersensitive and eager to shatter at even a faint scratch ) held metaphorical voltage for us. Matter is never merely matter but a choreography of risks and potentials.

And so we set out, guided by seismic echoes, cosmic hums, and the strange harmonics emitted by the Moon’s deeper veins. The Moon, fifth largest satellite in the Solar System, has no atmosphere to soften its silence; a silence so complete it becomes almost musical, a perfect background against which the faintest atomic histories can be heard.

Antimony is also a chameleon of colours, a painter’s companion: the yellows of antimony oxides, the Naples-yellow pigments and the stibnite oranges that illuminated centuries of artistic expression, the black modification of antimony sulphide that once lined the eyes of queens and priests. Under oxidation within glass, it shifts: Sb(III) drifting towards greenish and bluish hues, Sb(V) lifting into opaque, yellowish veils. It is a pigment of metamorphosis, and so, perhaps inevitably, a musician’s element too.

Antimony empowers IR detectors, batteries, semiconductors, piezo-electric crystals, pressure membranes; technologies essential to modern sound synthesis and experimental controllers, the very instruments shaping our music. Antimony trioxide compounds are widely used for their fire-resistant properties in children's clothing, toys, adhesives, textiles, electrical apparatuses, leather, coatings, and many other technological applications.

In alloys, Antimony hardens and strengthens Lead and Tin. Since the mid-15th century, such alloys have been used to cast type for printing presses, contributing to the birth of mass literacy and the diffusion of knowledge, an early form of cultural amplification. It appears in tower bells, PET catalysis, vulcanised rubber, enamel opacifiers, and solders… and, regrettably, bullets. To witness an element capable of such artistry and such destruction, forces a deeper reflection on human intent.

Antimony has a dual nature: indispensable in technology yet shadowed by toxicity, its stibine compounds dangerous, its oxides suspected carcinogens. And if we continue to mine Antimony on Earth at present rates, the resource may be exhausted before 2050. Perhaps that is why we felt compelled to search for its faint signature on the Moon: not out of exploitation, but contemplation. To listen to what the cosmos suggests before we take more from it.

Our musical Moon-mission, guided by the periodic table of Mendeleev, seeks to weave knowledge, beauty, curiosity and cosmic reverence into sound, to remind us that the Moon and the wider Cosmos are really but extensions of ourselves, expressions of the same dust and fire. If by weaving these cosmic stories into music we can spark even a small measure of wonder, or contribute, however humbly, to the dream of world peace, then our lunar voyage has already succeeded.

Tom Bessemans

On its voyage
of discovery,
The Moondig intercepts
musical messages that interconnect
the various spaces
of the free mind.